The Killing Blow
by Jessi Noan
Summary: They had killed a man. They were waiting for something to erase that, make it the thing before something else. But the blood could not be washed away. They didn't even know to try. Carlos and Jaime story. Devil's Backbone/Pan's Labyrinth.


**Title**: The Killing Blow

**Fandom**: _The Devil's Backbone, Pan's Labyrinth_

**Pairings**: none

**Warnings**: Mature themes: adult situations

**Genre**: Drama

**Rating**: R or M

**Feedback**: Appreciated.

**Notes**: When I read that Jaime and Carlos from _The Devil's Backbone_ made a cameo appearance in the guerrillas' camp in _Pan's Labyrinth_, I immediately started wondering how they made it from one place to the next and what that journey would be like. This is a result of that curiosity.

* * *

The road cuts through the barren land like a scar, connecting the orphanage to civilization in the most superficial of ways. It is the road that brought them all here, trapped them with the illusion of safety and escape, and the road they will have to follow for two days before they can find help.

They find her body just after dawn on the second day. Jaime cries. He will not admit it and no one looks at him as he does, but the tears well over and trace the groves of his nose before he rubs them off and demands they bury her. He will not leave – they cannot leave – until she is safely under the earth, away from the scavengers. They are men now, they know. They can do nothing else.

They reach the town on the third day. If not for the fighting that had started suddenly and with great force, the explosion at the orphanage would have made more of an impact. Someone would have noticed. Someone would have met them halfway.

But all is chaos in the village and the injured, starving boys have to find room among the other survivors. Amidst the crush of bodies, of the wounded and dying, Carlos suspects that this is one of the larger moments that will define his life. The ghost has given him a legacy to bear – a legacy of blood.

He has killed a man. He has earned this.

Though they do not speak of it, Carlos knows Jaime understands this. He too carries the legacy and has already set his shoulders against it. He bears it like a body slung over his shoulders, the dead weight of knowledge that will pull him down as it defines who he is. Carlos rolls his shoulders often, subconsciously trying to shake loose his own weight, but feeling only the hot breeze of the summer against his neck as his shirt collar shifts away then close, away and close.

The time in the town wears and days fade into weeks. They begin to break away from each other, from their brotherhood that is only the bond of shared trauma and stubborn survival, as first one, then another is taken in by a family, Carlos and Jaime both encouraging the other boys to accept the kindness of these broken people, never accepting it for themselves.

The blood is on their hands, on their faces. They look through their eyes into the world and see only the death they carry in their bodies, the death that bows them to the earth. They have bathed in blood at too young of an age. Neither feels they can be part of a family anymore; neither feels they can bring this into a stranger's home.

There are four now, when Jaime decides to leave the village, and pulled by the force of him, the others follow. They hitch a ride out and travel the roads like vagrants. They work some, for money or bread or a place to sleep, they steal some for the same and they beg with little success. As they reach one of the larger towns – Carlos feels it as a city, having not known many – and one of their remaining four finds work as an apprentice shoemaker, they celebrate his good luck and leave him there, in a life meant to be better than theirs.

The three reach their six-month mark together, a fact that remains unknown to them. A birthday passes without a whisper, while they sleep in the back of a truck taking them north. Six days later, as Carlos and Jaime climb out of the back, their companion turns to them and says, "I'll ride a bit longer," and pulls the rim of his hat low over his eyes. Carlos is stricken, but Jaime nods and wishes him luck, while smacking the side of the bed. The truck pulls away. Carlos finds it in him to wave goodbye.

Three weeks. They wander the countryside, so different in character than where the orphanage inhabited. Trees cover the hillside, houses dotting the valleys and ridges, a place sparsely populated but alive with farmers and hunters and shepherds. They take up working in the small village set at the edge of the region, doing odd jobs and steadily picking up their own trades – Carlos in carpentry, Jaime in butchering – before they become aware of the resistance.

It never is clear to either of them who hears of the resistance first. They have spent so long together, breathing the same thoughts in, that it is almost as if they hear it simultaneously, as though one is told and the other hears the echo at the same moment.

And somewhere between here and there, Jaime pulls them into the camp, into the resistance, drags them half unwilling further into the blood they have done nothing to scrub off.

They are the butcher and the carpenter.

The shapers of the dead.


End file.
